Film Comment Selects 2013: From the Life of the Marionettes

If watching Ingmar Bergman’s Face to Face left a sliver of doubt about the director’s scorn for modern psychiatry, From the Life of the Marionettes makes it amply clear. Only five years separate the two films. Face to Face, starring Liv Ullmann as Jenny, a young psychiatrist who tries, and ultimately fails, to reconcile her anxieties and sensitivity to her anesthetized work milieu, was made in 1975. What made watching the film viscerally agonizing was seeing Jenny’s slow descent into depression and phobia after a disintegrated marriage and being raped while trying to rescue a patient. Bergman constructed Jenny as a character of unfathomable complexity, harrowing to watch, at times incongruent.

From the Life of the Marionettes followed in 1980, yet in its stark black-and-white rendition of psychological anguish, and in its categorical refusal to grant any noble impulses to medical practitioners, it could be seen as a giant stylistic leap for Bergman: a savage yet coolly overplayed parody. Where Jenny from Face to Face left one feeling as if we were being asked to indulge in her unending pain, Bergman’s second glance at the psychiatric profession in Marionettes is more chilling, as if Bergman took a scalpel and surgically carved his narrative, always close to the nerve.

The story of Peter (Robert Atzorn), a young foundering professional, unhappily married to a domineering woman, Katarina (Christine Buchegger), is both the backdrop of a police investigation and a mock-examination of a clinical case. In the opening sequence, repeated at the end and the only one shot in vivid color, Peter starts to cavort with a young prostitute whom he ends up strangling and sodomizing. A series of flashbacks expose Peter and Katarina’s troubled relationship. The two profess to be devoted to each other, yet Katarina dismisses Peter’s attachment to his elderly mother with such vicious pleasure she ends up undermining any real closeness, flagellating Peter’s ego. Bergman seems to suggest that Peter’s dilemma, stuck between the two overpowering women, leads him to live a hysterical and dissipated life. He’s a convenient whip for Katarina, but can be equally lacerating, push her away, or indulge his sexual fantasies elsewhere.

How all this ends up in “the catastrophe,” as Bergman calls the murder, is never clear, and this may be the point. Katarina and Peter’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jensen (Martin Benrath), offers a hypothesis: He blames Peter’s violent outburst on his latent homosexuality, a diagnosis of which we get so little inkling it seems pat, at best. To give it some validity, Bergman trudges in Katarina and Peter’s longtime friend, Tim (Walter Schmidinger), who bares his soul to Katarina. Tim is terrified of aging, of never having gained wisdom, and being all the more foolish as his continues to fall for young men. It is Tim who emerges as the film’s only tragic character. In an echo of a Shakespearean overhearing scene, where the hero wrestles with his passions, Tim examines his face in the mirror confessing, “This whole business of intimacy is a dream.” Indeed, Tim is the one character allowed a high degree of self-awareness. Katarina is more of a mascot (the eponymous marionette¬), a beautiful woman who will not be pigeonholed into a domestic role, even if she must sacrifice her partner’s illusions and dignity in the process, but who ends up being as impenetrable to herself and viewers as she was at the beginning. To Dr. Jensen, Peter is a similar stick figure: Jensen dismisses Peter’s earlier fantasies of killing his wife as attention-seeking. He limits his advice to suggesting his patient drink off delusion, rather than go to a clinic where drugs will strip him of the last bit of his personality.

The two life choices that Bergman entertains—to endure but never be wiser for it or more gracious, or to be utterly anesthetized—are frightening. But there’s a strange, if alienating, beauty in the singular shots, as there always is when Bergman lovingly frames and lingers on his leading actors’ faces during their down-spiraling monologues, or has them get at each other in the Virginia Woolf like bickering scenes. It’s in those fully imagined marital fights that the film sheds it straightjacket of alternating plot twists, and lets the richer, more mournful emotions creep in.

2019 Tony Nominations: Hadestown and Ain’t Too Proud Lead Field

Nominations for the 73rd Tony Awards were announced this morning, with CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King and actors Bebe Neuwirth and Brandon Victor Dixon revealing the nominees in the top eight categories. Leading the pack with 14 nominations Hadestown, followed by Ain’t Too Proud—The Life of the Temptations with 12. Both shows were joined in the Best Musical category by Beetlejuice, The Prom, and Tootsie.

See below for a full list of the nominations.

Best MusicalAin’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of The TemptationsBeetlejuiceHadestownThe PromTootsie

Best PlayChoir Boy by TarellThe FerrymanGary: A Sequel to Titus AndronicusInkWhat the Constitution Means to Me

Best Revival of a PlayArthur Miller’s All My SonsThe Boys in the BandBurn ThisTorch SongThe Waverly Gallery

Best Revival of a MusicalKiss Me, KateRodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play Paddy Considine, The Ferryman Bryan Cranston, Network Jeff Daniels, To Kill a Mockingbird Adam Driver, Burn This Jeremy Pope, Choir Boy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play Annette Bening, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons Laura Donnelly, The Ferryman Elaine May, The Waverly Gallery Janet McTeer, Bernhardt/Hamlet Laurie Metcalf, Hillary and Clinton Heidi Schreck, What the Constitution Means to Me

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical Brooks Ashmanskas, The Prom Derrick Baskin, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations Alex Brightman, Beetlejuice Damon Daunno, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Santino Fontana, Tootsie

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical Stephanie J. Block, The Cher Show Caitlin Kinnunen, The Prom Beth Leavel, The Prom Eva Noblezada, Hadestown Kelli O’Hara, Kiss Me, Kate

Best Book of a MusicalAin’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations, Dominique MorisseauBeetlejuice, Scott Brown and Anthony KingHadestown, Anaïs MitchellThe Prom, Bob Martin & Chad BeguelinTootsie, Robert Horn

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play Bertie Carvel, Ink Robin De Jesús, The Boys in the Band Gideon Glick, To Kill a Mockingbird Brandon Uranowitz, Burn This Benjamin Walker, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play Fionnula Flanagan, The Ferryman Celia Keenan-Bolger, To Kill a Mockingbird Kristine Nielsen, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus Julie White, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus Ruth Wilson, King Lear

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical André De Shields, Hadestown Andy Grotelueschen, Tootsie Patrick Page, Hadestown Jeremy Pope, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations Ephraim Sykes, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations

Best Scenic Design of a Play Miriam Buether, To Kill a Mockingbird Bunny Christie, Ink Rob Howell, The Ferryman Santo Loquasto, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus Jan Versweyveld, Network

Best Scenic Design of a Musical Robert Brill and Peter Nigrini, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations Peter England, King Kong Rachel Hauck, Hadestown Laura Jellinek, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! David Korins, Beetlejuice

Best Costume Design of a Play Rob Howell, The Ferryman Toni-Leslie James, Bernhardt/Hamlet Clint Ramos, Torch Song Ann Roth, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus Ann Roth, To Kill a Mockingbird

Best Costume Design of a Musical Michael Krass, Hadestown William Ivey Long, Beetlejuice William Ivey Long, Tootsie Bob Mackie, The Cher Show Paul Tazewell, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations

Best Lighting Design of a Musical Kevin Adams, The Cher Show Howell Binkley, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations Bradley King, Hadestown Peter Mumford, King Kong Kenneth Posner and Peter Nigrini, Beetlejuice

The 91st Academy Awards are now behind us, and the telecast told us just about nothing that we don’t already know about AMPAS. Which isn’t to say that the ceremony wasn’t without its surprises. For one, whoever decided to capture Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s performance of “Shallow” from A Star Is Born in one single take that would end with the pair sitting side by side, rapt in each other and framed in Bergman-esque repose, should hereby be responsible for every Oscar ceremony moving forward.

For some, though not us, Green Book’s victory for best picture came as surprise. As our own Eric Henderson put it in his prediction: “Those attacking the film from every conceivable angle have also ignored the one that matters to most people: the pleasure principle. Can anyone blame Hollywood for getting its back up on behalf of a laughably old-fashioned but seamlessly mounted road movie-cum-buddy pic that reassures people that the world they’re leaving is better than the one they found? That’s, as they say, the future that liberals and Oscar want.”

In the end, the awards went down more or less as expected, with the only real shock of the evening being Oliva Colman’s stunning upset over Glenn Close in the best actress race. (Glenn, we hope you are on the phone right now trying to get that Sunset Boulevard remake to finally happen.) Black Panther proved more indomitable than expected, winning in three categories (none of which we predicted), and Free Solo pulling a victory over RBG that was the first big sign of the evening that, then and now, AMPAS members vote above all else with their guts.

Original SongAll The Stars from Black Panther by Kendrick Lamar, SZAI’ll Fight from RBG by Diane Warren, Jennifer HudsonThe Place Where Lost Things Go from Mary Poppins Returns by Marc Shaiman, Scott WittmanShallow from A Star Is Born by Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, Andrew Wyatt and Benjamin Rice (WINNER)When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch

Oscars 2019: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? Our Final Predictions

No one is okay with the Academy Awards the way they are, and everyone seems sure that they know how to fix them. Cut out the montages, bring back honorary award presentations, give stunt performers their own category, let ranked-choice voting determine every category and not just best picture, overhaul the membership ranks, hold the event before the guilds spoil the surprise, find a host with the magic demographic-spanning mojo necessary to double the show’s recent audience pools, nominate bigger hits, nominate only hits. Across the last 24 days, Ed Gonzalez and I have mulled over the academy’s existential crisis and how it’s polluted this year’s Oscar race so thoroughly that it feels eerily similar to the 2016 election cycle all over again. We’re spent, and while we don’t know if we have it in us to do this next year, we just might give it another go if Oscar proves us wrong on Sunday in more than just one category.

Below are our final Oscar predictions. Want more? Click on the individual articles for our justifications and more, including who we think should win in all 24 categories.

“I’m hyperventilating a little. If I fall over pick me up because I’ve got something to say,” deadpanned Frances McDormand upon winning her best actress Oscar last year. From her lips to Hollywood’s ears. No one is okay with the Academy Awards the way they are, and everyone seems sure that they know how to fix them. Cut out the montages, bring back honorary award presentations, give stunt performers their own category, let ranked-choice voting determine every category and not just best picture, overhaul the membership ranks, hold the event before the guilds spoil the surprise, find a host with the magic demographic-spanning mojo necessary to double the show’s recent audience pools, nominate bigger hits, nominate only hits.

But first, as McDormand herself called for during her speech, “a moment of perspective.” A crop of articles have popped up over the last two weeks looking back at the brutal showdown between Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare In Love at the 1999 Academy Awards, when Harvey Weinstein was at the height of his nefarious powers. Every retrospective piece accepts as common wisdom that it was probably the most obnoxious awards season in history, one that indeed set the stage for every grinding assault we’ve paid witness to ever since. But did anyone two decades ago have to endure dozens of weekly Oscar podcasters and hundreds of underpaid web writers musing, “What do the Academy Awards want to be moving forward, exactly? Who should voters represent in this fractured media environment, exactly?” How much whiskey we can safely use to wash down our Lexapro, exactly?

Amid the fox-in-a-henhouse milieu of ceaseless moral outrage serving as this awards season’s backdrop, and amid the self-obsessed entertainers now wrestling with the idea that they now have to be “content providers,” all anyone seems concerned about is what an Oscar means in the future, and whether next year’s versions of Black Panther and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody have a seat at the table. What everyone’s forgetting is what the Oscars have always been. In other words, the industry’s existential crisis has polluted this race so thoroughly that it feels eerily similar to the 2016 election cycle all over again, and Oscar’s clearly splintered voting blocs may become ground zero for a Make the Academy Great Again watershed.

In 1956, the Oscars took a turn toward small, quotidian, neo-realish movies, awarding Marty the top prize. The correction was swift and sure the following year, with a full slate of elephantine epics underlining the movie industry’s intimidation at the new threat of television. Moonlight’s shocking triumph two years ago was similarly answered by the safe, whimsical The Shape of Water, a choice that reaffirmed the academy’s commitment to politically innocuous liberalism in artistically conservative digs. Call us cynical, but we know which of the last couple go-arounds feels like the real academy. Which is why so many are banking on the formally dazzling humanism of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and so few on the vital, merciless fury of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.

And even if we give the benefit of the doubt to the academy’s new members, there’s that righteous, reactionary fervor in the air against those attempting to “cancel” Green Book. Those attacking the film from every conceivable angle have also ignored the one that matters to most people: the pleasure principle. Can anyone blame Hollywood for getting its back up on behalf of a laughably old-fashioned but seamlessly mounted road movie-cum-buddy pic that reassures people that the world they’re leaving is better than the one they found? That’s, as they say, the future that liberals and Oscar want.

Eric and I have done a good job this year of only selectively stealing each other’s behind-the-scenes jokes. We have, though, not been polite about stepping on each other’s toes in other ways. Okay, maybe just Eric, who in his impeccable take on the original screenplay free-for-all detailed how the guilds this year have almost willfully gone out of their way to “not tip the Oscar race too clearly toward any one film.” Case in point: Can You Ever Forgive Me? winning the WGA’s adapted screenplay trophy over presumed Oscar frontrunner BlacKkKlansman. A glitch in the matrix? We think so. Eric and I are still in agreement that the race for best picture this year is pretty wide open, though maybe a little less so in the wake of what seemed like an easy win for the Spike Lee joint. Nevertheless, we all know that there’s no Oscar narrative more powerful than “it’s about goddamn time,” and it was so powerful this year that even the diversity-challenged BAFTAs got the memo, giving their adapted screenplay prize to Lee, Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Kevin Willmott. To bamboozle Lee at this point would, admittedly, be so very 2019, but given that it’s walked back almost all of its bad decisions ahead of this year’s Oscars, there’s no way AMPAS isn’t going to do the right thing.

You know, if it weren’t for the show’s producers effectively and repeatedly saying everything about the Academy Awards is terrible and needs to be changed, and the year’s top-tier contenders inadvertently confirming their claims, this would’ve been a comparatively fun and suspenseful Oscar season. None of us who follow the Academy Awards expect great films to win; we just hope the marathon of precursors don’t turn into a Groundhog Day-style rinse and repeat for the same film, ad nauseam.

On that score, mission accomplished. The guilds have been handing their awards out this season as though they met beforehand and assigned each voting body a different title from Oscar’s best picture list so as not to tip the Oscar race too clearly toward any one film. SAG? Black Panther. PGA? Green Book. DGA? Roma. ASC? Cold War. ACE? Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Even awards-season kryptonite A Star Is Born got an award for contemporary makeup from the MUAHS. (That’s the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild, not the sound Lady Gaga fans have been making ever since A Star Is Born’s teaser trailer dropped last year.)

Not to be outdone, the Writers Guild of America announced their winners last weekend, and not only did presumed adapted screenplay frontrunner BlacKkKlansman wind up stymied by Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but the original screenplay prize went to Eighth Grade, which wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. Bo Burnham twisted the knife into AMPAS during his acceptance speech: “To the other nominees in the category, have fun at the Oscars, losers!” In both his sarcasm and his surprise, it’s safe to say he speaks on behalf of us all.

As is always the case, WGA’s narrow eligibility rules kept a presumed favorite, The Favourite, out of this crucial trial heat. But as the balloting period comes to a close, the question remains just how much enthusiasm or affection voters have for either of the two films with the most nominations (Roma being the other). As a recent “can’t we all just get along” appeal by Time’s Stephanie Zacharek illustrates, the thing Hollywood is most invested in this season involves bending over backward, Matrix-style, to celebrate the films they love and still dodge the cultural bullets coming at them from every angle.

Maybe it’s just tunnel vision from the cultural vacuum Oscar voters all-too-understandably would prefer to live in this year, but doesn’t it seem like The Favourite’s tastefully ribald peppering of posh-accented C-words would be no match for the steady litany of neo-Archie Bunkerisms spewing from Viggo Mortensen’s crooked mouth? Especially with First Reformed’s Paul Schrader siphoning votes from among the academy’s presumably more vanguard new recruits? We’ll fold our words in half and eat them whole if we’re wrong, but Oscar’s old guard, unlike John Wayne, is still alive and, well, pissed.

Oscar 2019 Winner Predictions: Sound Mixing

Given what Eric wrote about the sound editing category yesterday, it now behooves me to not beat around the bush here. Also, it’s my birthday, and there are better things for me to do today than count all the ways that Eric and I talk ourselves out of correct guesses in the two sound categories, as well as step on each other’s toes throughout the entirety of our Oscar-prediction cycle. In short, it’s very noisy. Which is how Oscar likes it when it comes to sound, though maybe not as much the case with sound mixing, where the spoils quite often go to best picture nominees that also happen to be musicals (Les Misérables) or musical-adjacent (Whiplash). Only two films fit that bill this year, and since 2019 is already making a concerted effort to top 2018 as the worst year ever, there’s no reason to believe that the scarcely fat-bottomed mixing of Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody will take this in a walk, for appealing to voters’ nostalgia for drunken karaoke nights of yore.

Oscar 2019 Winner Predictions: Sound Editing

If it were biologically possible to do so, both Ed and I would happily switch places with A Quiet Place’s Emily Blunt, because we’d much rather give birth in a tub while surrounded by murderous blind creatures than have to once again write our predictions for the sound categories. As adamant as we’ve been that the Academy owes it to the nominees to air every category, which they agreed to after an extended “just kidding,” it might have given us pause had the sound categories been among the four demoted by Oscar. But no, we must now endure our annual bout of penance, aware of the fact that actually knowing what the difference is between sound editing and sound mixing is almost a liability. In other words, we’ve talked ourselves out of correct guesses too many times, doubled down on the same movie taking both categories to hedge our bets too many times, and watched as the two categories split in the opposite way we expected too many times. So, as in A Quiet Place, the less said, the better. And while that film’s soundscapes are as unique and noisy as this category seems to prefer, First Man’s real-word gravitas and cacophonous Agena spin sequence should prevail.

Oscar 2019 Winner Predictions: Actress

Sometimes it’s important to just step back and pay your respects to a remarkable actress for having given a performance that, while not your, um, favourite nominated one, is still deserving of an Oscar victory lap. Now, if only others felt the same. Very early on in the awards season, there was already a sense that this award could become a career-achievement coronation for the six-time losing Glenn Close—and that people were going to have a problem squaring that with the fact that her Oscar would be tied to a film perceived to be a piffle. That’s not an inaccurate perception, but it’s difficult to remember a time when critics have used that as an excuse to not do their homework.

In short, have you seen The Wife? Indeed, until the awards-media system’s attention shifted full time into covering AMPAS’s A Series of Unfortunate Oscar Decisions, it seemed as if every day brought us a new article by some pundit about the Oscar race in which it strangely sounded as if the The Wife was still a blind spot for the writer. Which is shame, because Close gives good face throughout the film. Certainly, few Oscar-nominated films this year are as absurd as The Wife, but I’ll do battle with anyone who thinks Close is getting by on her legend alone. Close’s triumph is recognizing The Wife’s inherent ludicrousness and elevating it, and without condescension, with a kabuki-like verve that seeks to speak to the experiences of all women who’ve been oppressed by their men. It’s a turn worthy of Norma Desmond.

Today, the most reliable Oscar narrative is the overdue performer. And if you take stock in that narrative, then you’ll understand why I texted Eric, my fellow Oscar guru, the following on the morning of November 29: “I think Close is going to Still Alice at the Oscars.” After that morning, when the New York Film Critics Circle officially kick-started the Oscar season (and gave their award for best actress to Regina Hall in Support the Girls), no actress ran the table with the critics and guilds, but most of the cards that matter did fall into place for Close, and much as they did for Julianne Moore ahead of her winning the Oscar for Still Alice.

This was a done deal when Close won the Golden Globe, received a standing ovation, and gave the night’s most impassioned speech, immediately after which Eric conceded that my instincts had been right. Of course, that was no doubt easy for him to admit given that, by that point, the oxygen had already seeped out of A Star Is Born’s awards campaign, leaving only Olivia Colman in Close’s way. Colman has worked the campaign trail in spectacular ways, giving speeches that have been every bit as droll as this, but in the end, she doesn’t have the SAG, and as bold and subversive as her performance certainly is, it isn’t sufficiently big enough to convince enough AMPAS members that Close should continue waiting for Oscar.

Oscar 2019 Winner Predictions: Film Editing

Sigh, can we just edit this whole Oscar season from our memories? AMPAS has officially brought more queens back from the brink than this year’s season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars. Now that the academy has reneged on its plans to snip four categories from the live Oscar telecast, after first attempting damage control and assuring members that it will still run those four awards as not-so-instant replays in edited-down form later on in the show, we can once again turn our attention to the other editing that’s so vexed Film Twitter this Oscar season. We yield the floor to Twitter user Pramit Chatterjee:

People, actual fucking people, are watching scene after scene like this and are saying “bruuuh! best. movie. of. the. year”? This is objectively bad. Someone with no idea about editing will notice it. My brain is on fire thinking that this is an OSCAR NOMINATED MOVIE! FUCK! pic.twitter.com/QVDCxe2iaf

Very fuck! The academy would’ve been shooting itself in the foot by not airing what’s starting to feel like one of this year’s most competitive Oscar categories—a category that seems like it’s at the center of ground zero for the voters who, as a fresh New York Times survey of anonymous Oscar ballots confirms, are as unashamedly entertained by a blockbuster that critics called utterly worthless as they are feeling vengeful against those who would dare call a film they loved racist. Interestingly enough, the New York Times’s panel of voters seems palpably aware that Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is the nominee this year that’s going to go down in history as the “right thing” they’ll be embarrassed for not “doing.” No arguments from this corner. Lee’s film is narratively propulsive and knotty in ways that ought to translate into a no-brainer win here. (My cohort Ed recently mused that he’d give the film the Oscar just for the energy it displays cutting back and forth during phone conversations.)

We’re glad that the academy walked back its decision to not honor two of the most crucial elements of the medium (editing and cinematography) on the live Oscar telecast, but what we’re left with is the dawning horror that the formless flailing exemplified by the clip above might actually win this damned award. Guy Lodge sarcastically mused on the upside of Pramit’s incredulous tweet, “I’ve never seen so many people on Twitter discussing the art of film editing before,” and honestly, it does feel like Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody getting publicly dog-walked like this stands to teach baby cinephiles-in-training the language of the cut as well as any of the myriad montages the show producers intended on airing in lieu of, you know, actually awarding craftspeople. But only a fraction of the voting body has to feel sympathy for John Ottman (whose career, for the record, goes all the way back with Bryan Singer), or express admiration that he managed to assemble the raw materials from a legendarily chaotic project into an international blockbuster. The rest of the academy has their ostrich heads plunged far enough into the sand to take care of the rest.

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